I have written that start of a hundred books but I am finally sitting down and getting a novel out. I am really struggling with how to change things enough so that people still understand them but yet not similar enough to earth. Its a black hole and I find myself frustrated often. Examples of this are distance, time, body part, colors, plants animals. Its fantasy and on another world, so obviously I dont want to use the term miles for distance, but does it make since to use days hours minutes. I dont want to use the same animals like lions tiger ants, but I seem forced to use terms like insects birds or reptiles. Unless i just want to say flying creature all the time. So I guess I am asking for advice on where to stop. Have you found a system that works for you?
Unless it's a completely new creature that no one's ever heard of, use regular names and such. As for time, I created my own terms and then said "Oh, this is a base-10 unit or a base-12 unit of measure." Find a real-world equivalent and then explain it so that the person reading it understands the concept without having to explicitly say "this is basically feet or meters" or whatever else.
Well, remember you are telling a story to people here (unless there are aliens or smth i dunno). It makes sense to "translate" the units to relatable ones. I read a lot, and mostly fantasy at that, and reading normal units doesn't ever pull me out of the immersion unless its blatantly wrong (someone used leagues as a substitute for miles but kept the actual measurement the same…) I think learning entirely new units of measurement and scientific classifications is more distracting than that, unless there is a need to distinguish a difference, for example, calling a dragon a lizard is hilarious but different enough to be classified as another species. Calling it a random word as a substitute for lizard would be more off-putting i think. Even Tolkien "translates" many of his units or animals, and even includes christmas when describing a holiday at one point.
Thanks, that makes since, I think I hate trying to explain distance the most even though I have read fantasy books that have used miles and not been put off so thats a good point.
